Johns Hopkins Magazine -- September 1999
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SEPTEMBER 1999
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A DAUGHTER'S
DECLARATION

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A Daughter's Declaration
Author's Notes

By Melissa Hendricks

Like Michele Cooley-Quille, I have a family story concerning an American president. To be more precise, a vice president. As the story goes, an uncle going back several generations was Thomas E. Hendricks. Not a household name, to be sure, but Hendricks was the vice president during one of Grover Cleveland's terms in office. I understand he died in office.

Anyway, I was told this story as a child, and knew no more than that. There are no documents that I know of to confirm my immediate family's connection to the vice president. A few years ago, I was driving through rural West Virginia in a region I knew contained a town named Hendricks. Curiosity tugged, and I followed many meandering roads until I came to Hendricks. The town, or, more aptly, holler, consisted of a few houses surrounding a little stream all snuggled in-between rugged foothills. It was miles from any city.

Why, I wondered, was this little speck on the map called Hendricks? After a few fruitless inquiries (several residents I asked had no idea where Hendricks got its name), I made my way to a woman who was the unofficial keeper of the town's history. She invited me inside. "Was Hendricks named after the vice president?" I eagerly asked.

"Well, yes," she responded.

"Had the vice president visited here at some point?"

No. The truth, she said, was that Hendricks's founders had wanted to name the town Cleveland, after the president who was in office at the time. But Cleveland was already taken. So they resorted to the v.p.


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